1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle tracking system installed on a vehicle. Specifically, the present invention relates to a vehicle tracking system that tracks a vehicle in a reliable manner by using template matching. Preferably, the vehicle tracking system is a preceding vehicle tracking system that tracks a preceding vehicle.
2. Background Information
One example of a conventional vehicle tracking system using template matching is disclosed in the Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-113158. This publication describes a system for tracking an object in which a reference template is defined for a vehicle detected by using image processing of an input image. Moreover, the system disclosed in the above publication detects a new position of the vehicle by finding a correlation between a newly inputted image and the reference template. If the correlation value is high, the reference template is updated to an image of a portion from new image including the position where the vehicle was detected. Since the template matching position corresponds to the position of the vehicle, tracking and vehicle position measuring can be accomplished simultaneously. Moreover, the template matching can accommodate changes in the size of the preceding vehicle.
In view of the above, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure that there exists a need for an improved preceding vehicle tracking system. This invention addresses this need in the art as well as other needs, which will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure.